Labour Sheffield City Council's War on Street Tree Protestors - Day 2

Monday witnessed a ramping up of Sheffield City Council's 'streets ahead' PFI contractor Amey's attempts to fell Sheffield's largest street trees as it appears dozens of private security personnel were deployed along side felling crews to ensure that any attempts at the preventing felling of street trees were met with a security response. The catalyst for Monday's change of tack by the city council's contractor Amey appears to be the looming deadline contained within the PFI contract to fell 6,000 of Sheffield's big street trees by the end of 2017 (out of an estimated total of 36,000).

To date approximately 5,750 of Sheffield's big street trees have been felled leaving 250 remaining to fulfill contractual obligations and thus with the holidays approaching the Council and it's contractor have adopted a blitzkrieg approach by blanket coverage of whole areas with barriers surrounding dozens of trees as they play a cat and mouse game with tree campaigners eager to prevent further tree felling's. Campaigners are now being met with increased security measures force as following youtube video illustrates.

For most of 2017 the situation at felling sites had proven to be largely peaceful on both sides of the barriers as protestors crossing barriers to prevent the felling of 'healthy' trees at worst would tend to have their photos taken by Council information gatherers.

Where virtually every encounter has proven peaceful, with only a few rare reports of any physical contact between protestors and the council tree felling crews.

However, the start of this week has seen a Blitzkrieg approach, one of aggressively deploying private security personnel for the purpose of fulfilling the contracts quota of felling 6000 big street trees by the end of 2017, the first 5 year tranche of a 25 year contract.

As for the impact of the felling to date, apart from the impact on the health of Sheffielders by the removable of thousands of trees that had been soaking up vehicle pollution, one unintended consequence is being felt in Sheffield's housing market in the wake of leafy suburbs being stripped of all of their trees house prices have also been felled. Sheffield's tree lined leafy suburbs that the estate agents so welcoming advertise are increasingly becoming no more. Trees that have taken more than a 100 years to reach their adult splendour have been felled in there thousands leaving behind either voids or saplings that can fail to survive or are prone to vandalism, all in exchange for large trees with capital values of between £50k and £150k now permanently gone!

And as I a warned right at the start of 2017 (and for much of 2016 in many youtube videos) that such ongoing capital destruction would have consequences not just for the streets that were being stripped bare by a council that had OUTSOURCED DEMOCRACY TO A MULTINATIONAL but that the rampant tree felling's were DEVALUING THE WHOLE CITY! Where Amey in effect was felling Sheffield house prices.

Which means that the Labour Sheffield city councilors have effectively out sourced themselves out of a job, betraying all those they purport to represent instead having handed power over to a foreign multinational to dictate what happens on Sheffield's streets. Whilst many of the tree campaigners remain unwilling to recognise the fact that it is a Labour council that is doing this to Sheffield, tending to respond that it has nothing to do with politics despite the fact that it is ALL ABOUT POLITICS!

I first became interested in what was happening to Sheffield's street trees some 2 years year ago, given that unlike most I recognised the impact that the loss of capital value of felling big mature trees would have on property prices that some web sites estimate have a value of £150k per tree. Of course this is a local issue, not a national issue yet! But given continuing austerity and brexit uncertainty than what is happening in Sheffield 'may' be replicated in cities across Britain as cash strapped councils outsource the running of their cities to PFI multinationals.

And where Sheffield's trees are concerned, then during 2017 my focus will be on documenting what it means for Sheffield Streets to be stripped bare of the capital value of trees estimated to be worth £150k per large mature tree, as undoubtedly it will have detrimental effects on the value of all properties on the streets and cumulatively amounts to a devaluation of the whole city.

And so as we approach the last month of 2017, my warnings of the capital destruction as a consequence of street tree felling's impacting house prices is coming to pass as on several measures such as Zoopla, Sheffield house prices momentum has now decidedly turned negative with rising prices of early 2017 now turning negative as annual house prices are now falling at the rate -0.25%, that masks a crash underway in Sheffield's house prices as illustrated by house prices falling by 2% during the past 3 months which annualises to -8%, which in real terms after inflation implies -11%, a trend which is more than likely to materialise by this time next year as house price falls in real terms enter double digits.

So that is no confusion of what is happening to Sheffield's property market as its streets are stripped of capital value estimated at over £200mln, the following video follows what happened to 1 street amongst hundreds to illustrate what it means for streets to be stripped of ALL of their trees, capital that has taken over a 100 years to grow destroyed in a matter of weeks, a loss of value of over £1/2 million for this street alone that instantly converts into a 10% loss in average house price values for the street that ripples out to the neighbouring streets, making the street and the area LESS appealing to prospective home buyers, no longer a leafy suburb!

My forthcoming in-depth housing market analysis will seek to update my Sheffield housing market analysis of 2013, given Sheffield's fast disappearing leafy suburbs, as the Council will have felled approx 20% of Sheffield's street trees by the end of this year :

The below map details which areas of Sheffield should be avoided and which areas should be favoured in terms of the best places to live. Obviously the amount of financing available will play an important factor in determining the choice of area's, but at a minimum the RED areas should be avoided as people moving to Sheffield, purchasing a property for their own residency in a Red area will soon come to regret their decision.

The large expanse of orange area's are as a consequence of the size of Sheffield's public sector and the private sector that directly relies on it, that continues to see deep cuts in local government spending, this also means that there is a continuing large supply of properties in these areas of Sheffield which acts to depress average house prices that masks booms taking places in pockets of the city and thus offers many opportunities towards the middle end of the property market.

Meanwhile prospective home buyers can expect a huge jump in financing requirements to purchase a property in the affluent areas of the city (Dark Green) which are situated in the the South West of the city as these areas will have experienced little in terms of the impact of the economic depression with the consequences and in terms of expected house prices is that just like many areas of London, these areas are already trading near their pre-crash levels as these are the areas that will be those that are in greatest NATIONAL demand, just as many parts of London are in great INTERNATIONAL demand (as high as 50% of properties in many areas of London are bought by foreign investors).

Nadeem Walayat has over 30 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of five ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series that can be downloaded for Free.

Nadeem is the Editor of The Market Oracle, a FREEDaily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication that presents in-depth analysis from over 1000 experienced analysts on a range of views of the probable direction of the financial markets, thus enabling our readers to arrive at an informed opinion on future market direction. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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